LONE RANGER:250 mil gets you canceled but 215 mil is just right ? (1 Viewer)

[Edwin-S]

Yeah, I watched John Carter.
It was terrible.

Considering the 51% at RT, I'm not alone in that assessment. http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/john_carter/

To me it appears both films suffer from the same basic problem: throw lots of money and messed up stories on the screen, they think, and the audience will show up. It just doesn't work

Well, it will be interesting to see how Stanton adjusts his directing style for "FINDING DORY". Both WALL-E and JC were stories that meandered and were somewhat indulgent.

 

[mattCR]

Slate did a story recently where they asked young kids o rank the Pixar movies, and Finding Nemo faired very poorly.

 

[TravisR]

Yeah, I watched John Carter.
It was terrible.

I'm glad someone said it. You can blame an ad campaign for lack of box office success but you can't blame an ad campaign for a movie being lousy.

 

[dpippel]

Yeah, I watched John Carter.
It was terrible.

No film featuring a scantily-clad Lynn Collins can be considered "terrible" IMO.

Seriously though, I didn't think JC was THAT bad. It just wasn't that GOOD.

 

[Edwin-S]

No kidding. Stanton's films tend to meander and there is very little rapid cutting in his films. FINDING NEMO is a film that plays more to parents or adults than little kids. I don't take the opinions of ADD afflicted kids, that are used to rapid cutting, seriously when it comes to a slow-paced film about the pitfalls and worries of parenting. FN wasn't about Nemo. It was about Marlin's growth as a parent, so why would a little kid find that as interesting some of Pixar's other films.

I consider BRAVE to be one of Pixar's biggest misfires, but I can still watch it.

 

[Edwin-S]

No film featuring a scantily-clad Lynn Collins can be considered "terrible" IMO.

Seriously though, I didn't think JC was THAT bad. It just wasn't that GOOD.

Like 90% of Hollywood's output. Bad movie, good movie, it's all relative.

 

[dpippel]

Sorry Edwin, but 90% of Hollywood's output doesn't include Lynn Collins. I'm ready to forgive Stanton.

 

[Edwin-S]

Sorry Edwin, but 90% of Hollywood's output doesn't include Lynn Collins. I'm ready to forgive Stanton.

Ha ha. Really. I mean, I'm not saying that it was a great movie, just not as awful as everyone seems to like to make it out to be. She would definitely be a saving grace in the film. I, generally, can find something I like about most films, even if I think they are bad.

It's like "Battlefield Earth". Sure, it was an abysmally shitty film and I would never forgive or attempt to excuse John Travolta for producing something so incredibly awful; however, on the flip side, there was something hilariously entertaining in watching Travolta go off the deep end with his acting, because the director was powerless to reign in Travolta's enormous ego. It was an education on what can result when a director loses or never has any control of his film.

 

[Ejanss]

Yeah, I watched John Carter. It was terrible.

Considering the 51% at RT, I'm not alone in that assessment. http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/john_carter/

(51%? Well, um, I guess technically that means you're not "alone", but doesn't that suggest you're in the minority? I'm not sure of your angry point, here....)

Carter took a story NOBODY (except the book-fan faithful) had heard of, and treated it with serious fan-evangelism, whether it was the lame trailer that reminded too many people of Prince of Persia or not. Ranger, OTOH, takes a story it was nervously convinced everyone in the entire country has heard of already, and didn't know whether to "update" it with CGI foofarah or "parody" it with quirky humor, and according to most of the most of the early reviews, the schizophrenia shows.
Call it an abstract ingredient, but a little integrity will get you a long way. If a true Ranger fan had been writing the script, we'd have seen a lot fewer elephants and possessed outlaws.

It's like "Battlefield Earth". Sure, it was an abysmally shitty film and I would never forgive or attempt to excuse John Travolta for producing something so incredibly awful; however, on the flip side, there was something hilariously entertaining in watching Travolta go off the deep end with his acting, because the director was powerless to reign in Travolta's enormous ego. It was an education on what can result when a director loses or never has any control of his film.

As long as we're deconstructing "mysterious" big-budget flops, Battlefield: Earth was literally not technically any better or worse than any average made-for-SyFy epic the Asylum cranks out on an average week, with Travolta in the Eric Roberts role. (We showed it at an annual sci-fi festival one year; the entire audience was expecting an Ed Wood howler, they ended up showing "Galaxina" first, and....oh, how can you follow an act like that?)
What B:E did have was an audience laying traps for it, and dancing victory dances on the box office grave. Anyone here remember the kitsch cult-phrase "It's a popcorn movie!" or wonder where it came from?--The Scient*l*g*sts had made themselves particularly noisome in thinking that they could pull the wool over the audience's eyes with a lot of summer-movie marketing, and use a lot of really-kewl-spaceships to keep us from finding out we were being hit up for contributions at the airport--When they found out they couldn't, our sarcasm as a rebellious audience got a little...gleeful: Remember how we were all rather excessively beating up on Battleship last year, because Hasbro thought we'd all rush like sheep to a movie that looked like Transformers?--Yyyyeah. Kinda like that. Only more so.

seriously when it comes to a slow-paced film about the pitfalls and worries of parenting. FN wasn't about Nemo. It was about Marlin's growth as a parent, so why would a little kid find that as interesting some of Pixar's other films.

Or as my collection of movie terms puts it, "The Hook Factor":
Do little kids really want to see sentimental stories of bad-parent guilt as much as new-daddy screenwriters and directors want to write and direct them?
(That said, however, Dory speaking Whale will crack up any kid between the ages of 3-9. Anywhere. Anytime. Rather annoyingly so, in fact. )

 

[mattCR]

As long as we're deconstructing "mysterious" big-budget flops, Battlefield: Earth was literally not technically any better or worse than any average made-for-SyFy epic the Asylum cranks out on an average week, with Travolta in the Eric Roberts role. (We showed it at an annual sci-fi festival one year; the entire audience was expecting an Ed Wood howler, they ended up showing "Galaxina" first, and....oh, how can you follow an act like that?)
What B:E did have was an audience laying traps for it, and dancing victory dances on the box office grave. Anyone here remember the kitsch cult-phrase "It's a popcorn movie!" or wonder where it came from?--The Scient*l*g*sts had made themselves particularly noisome in thinking that they could pull the wool over the audience's eyes with a lot of summer-movie marketing, and use a lot of really-kewl-spaceships to keep us from finding out we were being hit up for contributions at the airport--When they found out they couldn't, our sarcasm as a rebellious audience got a little...gleeful: Remember how we were all rather excessively beating up on Battleship last year, because Hasbro thought we'd all rush like sheep to a movie that looked like Transformers?--Yyyyeah. Kinda like that. Only more so.


Or as my collection of movie terms puts it, "The Hook Factor":
Do little kids really want to see sentimental stories of bad-parent guilt as much as new-daddy screenwriters and directors want to write and direct them?
(That said, however, Dory speaking Whale will crack up any kid between the ages of 3-9. Anywhere. Anytime. Rather annoyingly so, in fact. )

Well, I thought Transformers was bad, but Battle Field Earth -IS- measurably worse than most. There are some reasons for that: (1) It doesn't have a consistent plot of any sort (2) DUTCH ANGLES (3) Horricially acted (4) Bad effects.

If you're comparing it to a Saturday afternoon SyFy channel film, then that's one thing, but you can't reasonably make the comparison to "any generic scifi film"

 

[FoxyMulder]

I have seen a lot of films, Battlefield Earth isn't that bad compared to some of the Z list stuff out there, i could name countless films made over the last few years on a low budget that use cheap CGI, everything from rip-off zombie flicks to cheap paranormal rubbish, BattleField Earth is a masterpiece compared to some of them, i also say if you think a film like BattleField Earth is the worst you have ever seen then you haven't seen enough films.

 

[RobertR]

I have seen a lot of films, Battlefield Earth isn't that bad compared to some of the Z list stuff out there, i could name countless films made over the last few years on a low budget that use cheap CGI, everything from rip-off zombie flicks to cheap paranormal rubbish

That highlights the really sad part about today's bad films. Unlike those "Z list, "low budget", "cheap" films, these people have OODLES of money to throw around, PLENTY to hire good actors and writers. But no, they'd rather spend it on cramming the movie full of CGI effects and decibels.

 

[FoxyMulder]

That highlights the really sad part about today's bad films. Unlike those "Z list, "low budget", "cheap" films, these people have OODLES of money to throw around, PLENTY to hire good actors and writers. But no, they'd rather spend it on cramming the movie full of CGI effects and decibels.

Too much spent on effects and not enough spent on a decent script, the trouble is some of these films sell, thus we get more.

 

[Quentin]

Good thing this thread has turned into a JC fest because the Lone Ranger isn't worth this much dialogue. It is garbage.

I'm on the fence with JC - it has potential in Lynn Collins, and Willem Dafoe. But, it also has Taylor Kitsch - a miserable excuse for a leading "actor". And, it meanders a bit. It tried to combine too many JC ideas from the books and failed to captivate us over a strong central idea.

 

[FoxyMulder]

If Taylor Kitsch is the leading man in a film then it's automatically a flop, he is a jinx, just kidding Taylor, or am i. ?

 

[SilverWook]

Slate did a story recently where they asked young kids o rank the Pixar movies, and Finding Nemo faired very poorly.

Maybe they would have been better off asking people old enough to have seen the movie when it came out ten years ago?

 

[Ejanss]

Maybe they would have been better off asking people old enough to have seen the movie when it came out ten years ago?

Maybe--Remember, the whole Pixar Worship, as well as the "Traditional animation is dead!" panic never happened until Hollywood couldn't explain why Nemo was out-grossing, and then re-out-grossing every single big Hollywood action blockbuster of 2003. (Ie., pretty much the same reason this summer that Monsters U and Despicable 2 are out-grossing Man of Steel.)
One other reason is that we were just coming out of a big third-party animation gold-rush glut started by the surprise success of Paramount's "Rugrats Movie" in '97, and every corporate studio parent-company and his brother was pumping out feature movies, while the indie wannabes were still pumping out Disney clones. Analysts LITERALLY didn't know one studio brandname from another--Why should they; Pixar had had a hit with Monsters Inc. and Dreamworks had had a hit with Shrek, it was all a gold commodity.
And then the Bubble burst: 2002-03 racked up a record-breaking number of hi-profile animated flops, including "Spirit", "Powerpuff Girls Movie", "Final Fantasy", 'Teacher's Pet", "Hey Arnold" and "Treasure Planet", and the same analysts who couldn't distinguish why one studio had a hit now couldn't distinguish why one studio had a flop--If it was all "commodity", then there must be some mass commodity reason why they were all doing so poorly...Maybe it was a social change!

The panic over studios unable to explain why Nemo was a hit with audiences only gave it more of a mythos with the new Pixar fans who knew why and were just beginning to celebrate the brandname. Nobody had noticed Pixar until Toy Story 2, and Monsters had been overshadowed by X vs. Y comparisons to Shrek; Nemo was one of the first movies that had audiences gushing over favorite characters and storytelling styles, and reinforcing the cult-fan reputation.
The kids today however....watch it on video, and thought The Incredibles was better.

 

[Edwin-S]

Well, actually, the kids are right. The Incredibles is better than FN. FN is far down my list of Pixar favorites; although, it is still a pretty good movie.Of course, maybe I'm not qualified to judge. Of the six failures you listed, I have three in my collection.

 

[todd s]

Saw this today with my 10yr old son. We enjoyed it. Yes, the beginning was draggy and they made the Lone Ranger too much of a dufus at the start. The train scene was cool. My son (who heard reviews saying it was bad) said at the end...that he didn't think it was bad.